The whale with over 80 plastic bags in its stomach

Meant to write about this a while ago already. At the beginning of this month it became known that a pilot whale in Thailand had fought for its life. Already during the rescue attempt it threw up 5 plastic bags. The rescue attempt failed and the whale died eventually. An autopsy revealed 80 plastic bags in its stomach, weighing up to 8 kg (18 lb).

80+ plastic bags in the stomach was too much for the whale. When will it be too much for the humans? For the rest of the world?

Magnetising magnetars

Dear reader,

everyone of us knows what a magnet is. But I myself have only recently heard of magnetars. To be clear: there are no known magnetars anywhere near to be a danger to us. So, whatever you'll read now and may get you scared: don't panic!

I understand very little about physics and astronomy, to tell you exact details anyway, so it can't get too scary today. Nevertheless I want to give you an idea of what I understand what a magnetar is. In the universe there are planets, meaning objects that move around, like the earth for example, going round itself as well as around the sun. Planets don't shine. The sun however is not a planet, but a star and stars do shine, but don't move. Stars like the sun have much energy, which at some point is used up. Some of you may certainly have heard the word supernova. That's what happens to a star when the energy is used up: the star shines one last time really bright, while it explodes and at least the shape and everything it had until then is destroyed. Sometimes the things left over after a destruction of the star with a certain strength of a magnetic field, turn into a neutron star, a magnetar.

Magnetars are relatively small stars, just about 10 to 30 km (12 mi) in diameter (which is about the size of a smaller city). They turn around themselves in an incredibly fast time. A rotation period is the time a planet takes to turn around itself to get to the starting position again. The rotation period of the earth is 24 hours. Magnetars are often found with partner stars. Wikipedia has as one of the rules to call a single star a magnetar, among other things, the rotation period of 1 to 12 seconds! Sure enough something small of 10 to 30 km in diameter can rotate around itself in a faster time than the earth anyway. Still I find 1 to 12 seconds for a rotation period pretty fast. Even though they're relatively small, magnetars have the mass of 40 times that of the sun!

The dangerous thing about magnetars for one thing are the x-rays and the gamma rays, which come up every now and then. X-rays aren't healthy for us anyway, which is why they try not to make a person take x-rays too often. Gamma rays are the shortest wave length we know so far and they're the most dangerous, too. Even if they don't kill us right away, they change the molecules and that kills us in the medium-term, similar to tumours. But not only that. When a magnetar is as far away from the earth as the moon, it's magnetic field would pull your coin money out of your trouser pockets. A magnetar half the distance of the moon and the earth would destroy the magnetic strip of your credit card forever. I don't even want to think any further about people with a pacemaker or other metal objects in them...

I can't tell you much more about magnetars actually. Like I said, I don't know much about physics or astronomy. I just find it fascinating to have learned about stars, which are just about the size of a city, but have considerably more mass than the sun and a strong magnetic field so it can pull your coin moneyout of your pockets. I'll tell you a little bit more about magnets and magnetic power anyway... in another blog post.

Until next blog,
sarah

The quagga and the woolly mammoth

Dear reader,

did you ever see a quagga or heard of them? Of course not seen it „for real“. They've been extinct since about 1883. Quaggas have been relatives of plain zebras today. Although the quagga wasn't white with black stripes, but light brown with almost no white stripes except on the head and neck. They have lived in South Africa and have been hunted mostly, because they were seen by the Dutch settlers as natural competitors of the cows. Only much later, after the last quagga had died August, 12, 1883 in the Artis-Zoo in Amsterdam, it was realised just how far the hunt had gone. By the way, the quagga (Equus quagga quagga) was not a separate species of zebras, but a subspecies of the plain zebra (equus quagga).

In 1987 The Quagga Project was started. The idea is pretty simple: when two plain zebras with few stripes mate, they (hopefully) get a child with few stripes and eventually the zebras of the project will then have so few stripes that they resemble the quagga. These could then be settled back in South Africa. So a mistake once made over 100 years ago would, at least in part, be put right. One could argue that a zebra, which looks like a quagga, because it has few stripes, doesn't make a real quagga. The people of the Quagga Project actually thought about that, too, and argue against that on the subpage Criticism of the Quagga Project. They say that because the quagga is extinct now, no other specifics other than the reduction of stripes can be made out. Also the grasses the plain zebras eat today are very close to those that existed in quagga times and would. So really it isn't a very strong argument to say that the reduction of stripes alone will not make a real quagga. You are free give your thoughts on that in the comments.

The Quagga Project has a whole bunch of photos with zebras, which already have visibly fewer stripes already. You can check out the photos at the following link: http://www.quaggaproject.org/Quagga-Graphic-Elements/PhotoGallery/PhotoGallery/slide.html

Woolly mammoths were pretty common in America as well as Eurasia before they went extinct. Because they have been living and gone extinct in a cold stage, many remains have been mummified because of the ice and remained relatively preserved. Maybe you can imagine what some scientists think of or are actually more or less working on. Correct, the mammoth would raise from the dead. Similarly to the quagga one attempt is get close to a mammoth through selection of existing elephants. Another thought is to use available DNA from mammoths and use them or even creating the necessary DNA, that is the sperm, to plant it into a living elephant. The cow elephant then would idially give birth to a mammoth baby. The anatomy of elephants and other aspects such as the suspected long gestation period like living elephants today (which is about 21 to 22 months) would make this very difficult and would make this a really long and time-consuming project. To create an artificial egg cell, the chromosome science isn't quite ready yet and the needed specimens of existing cells of mammoth findings are too fragmented.

I could sort of understand to create a quagga. This zebra-quagga would at least live Africa in an environment close to that of the actual quagga. A mammoth however... Where should the mammoth live and what from?

Surely it's an exciting thing, whether it can be possible to recreate animals again. But what for? To have again what isn't anymore and existed once before? To be able to say and show that we could and die make it happen? It would certainly be a sensation and impressive. But I think, it shouldn't be forgotten that the real natural environment of the animals doesn't exist anymore. The so called civilised humans will destroy the world more and more and with it the animals that (still) exist today. Wouldn't it make more sense, instead of recreating extinct animals, to make it so that endangered and critically endangered animals live can live on?

Until next blog,

sarah

Holey logic

Dear reader,

I'm living in the ruhr area, which means it's an area shaped by mining. What wasn't much thought of at the time of coal mining back then, is the fact that by drilling shafts underground, the ground level will be changed and moving, too. There is especially a danger of old shafts collapsing and leaving deep holes in the ground. You can see that in my parents' home, when you look around for example in the living-room. There and in the other rooms, you'll see smaller or longer cracks in the walls. You shouldn't think about it too much. Otherwise your mind might create images of suddenly tumbling walls or the ground would open up and swallow it up! There's also an interesting crack in the parquet floor between the living-room and dining-room. Now in winter the crack is almost invisible and closed. In the summer it's clearly visible and has the thickness of a finger. Once I heard my mother say that we'll have to leave the house in any case in about 10 years or so, when the house will be collapsing or breaking apart from the mining. A scary though, that the house will suddenly just collapse or break apart like that and be impossible to live in.

As a fan of Mark Gatiss, I know he was born in county durham. So when in the end of august this year, one of my mails from the guardian had the article headline of “30 metre wide sinkhole appears in Durham”, I was all ears, of course. Sam Hillyard had been for a walk with her dog when she noticed the hole, which has even grown wider now. The bottom can't be seen. It's assumed that if someone falls in there, it would be impossible to get the person out again. Which is why there are warnings now to keep your distance. It's assumed that it comes from mining in that area.


I was practically speechless when I read the following article headline though: “Kiruna: the town being moved 3km east so it doesn't fall into a mine”. The swedish town lives from iron-ore mining. Now the mining resulted in so much damage in the city, that the citizens have to move. Typical for the civilised people to often start thinking about their actions and results of that, when their own life is at risk because of it. Maybe futuristic films like Twelve Monkeys aren't that unrealistic after all and the surface of the earth is contaminated with something or otherwise condemned as uninhabitable. Or everything is sunken in from the many drillings and mining of things inside the earth, that there simply isn't a surface anymore as we know it now.

Until next blog,

sarah